VPA was created by corporate bankers in New York for their amusement. Also for their survival. After 30 years, it now is open to executives with similar interests. Participation is free. Participation is anonymous.
This is an ongoing list; names will be filled in due time.
Carpenter, Michael; Denunzio, Ralph—The Kidder Peabody Saga
Ralph Denunzio runs a company like blind man weaving through traffic
What did we expect out of Jack Welch? He who sleeps with dogs gets fleas, right? He wouldn’t have bought Kidder Peabody if he’d known there was a “skunk,” but we imagine he was already pretty used to the smell at that point. The more changes he made (ie, hiring Carpenter), and the more he tried to soothe customers’ concerns by pouring money into Kidder, the more errant the company’s path became—like a petulant child who won’t get a job and move out. But this was Welch’s child.
Carpenter may not have been the best choice. He tried to turn around the Peabody’s poisonous culture with a bold plan to improve the traders, to improve their personal business ethic—without having a brokerage license himself. And Peabody dealt securities! Last we heard the CFPB was targeting him for ripping off minority communities.
Kidder Peabody’s problems didn’t start with the Joe Jett scandal, or any other scandal you can think of (Martin Siegal, bonds trading—whatever suits your fancy). It started with their culture of aggressive, reckless trading in the unmitigated pursuit of profit. It’s a culture that finds roots in Walter Wriston’s (who was on the board of GE at the time of their purchase of Peabody) philosophy and fruits in John Stumpf’s massive scam. The reason Jack Welch kept uncovering problems in K-P is that the cancer of greed had spread to all of its branches—and throwing money to fix it only enabled its corruption. Stressing “the high-powered profit growth” that GE’s businesses were “supposed to have,” Welch sought the very end that had poisoned Peabody’s culture in the first, with their blind pursuit of profit. When profit is the bottom line of a deal, you stay staring at that bottom line like everything above it, everything that got you there doesn’t exist. That’s how you get your Joe Jetts. That’s how you get ’07.
Case, Steve—AOL
Cayne, James—Bear Stearns
Cheney, Dick—Halliburton
Connolly, Walter—Bank of New England
Bad banking practices taking down New England banking system? Kind of like the RISDC crisis of 91?
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/04/business/how-one-man-s-ego-wrecked-a-bank.html
“Federal regulators, wary of troubled real estate loans, have visited other area banks, most notably the Bank of Boston and the Shawmut National Bank Corporation. Regardless of the findings, bankers say, the Bank of New England debacle has tarred them all. It has already depressed their own shares, making it more difficult for them to raise capital and leaving them more vulnerable to takeovers.”
Same old story of reckless lending in order to serve personal interests of empire building, bonuses, etc.
He gets really screwed—doesn’t get the fancy severance packages executives normally get—its karmic.
Clausen, A.W.—Bank of America
Corzine, John—MF Global Holdings